McDonald's delivery is here, thanks to a partnership with UberEats

Yes, you read that headline correctly, after 43 years of sticking its ground and not offering a takeaway service, fast food mega-chain McDonald's has teamed up with UberEats to offer takeaway Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets and McFlurrys.

The takeaway service has launched initially on a trial basis, with 22 restaurants in London, seven in Nottingham and three in Leeds taking part. Food-craving customers that live within a mile and a half of the participating restaurants will be able to order their food through the UberEats app, pay a £2.50 delivery charge regardless of order, and patiently wait for a courier on a moped or bicycle to turn up at their front door, food in hand.

Orders can be placed between 7am - 2am, so if you wake up and need a McMuffin, or get in from a night out and need some chicken nuggets, you'll be able to get your food. No longer will you need to ask your taxi driver to pull into a drive-through.

The partnership with UberEats is almost definitely a reaction to the success of rival food delivery services such as Just Eat and Deliveroo. Analytics company NPD Group said food orders through these sort of apps hit 599 million in 2016 and worth £3.6 billion.

The move will also be due to the fact Burger King and KFC, both rival fast food chains, both have their own delivery services, launching in 2015 and 2017 respectively. KFC has a partnership with Just Eat.

If all goes well, and we have no reason to believe it won't, McDonald's says it will look at expanding both the number of restaurants and number of cities that can sign up to the service. For a full list of participating restaurants in London, Nottingham and Leeds, head to the McDonald's website.